


Flowers Fix Everything (At Least I Hope)

by pinabutterandjam



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Lance is a clumsy mess, M/M, One Shot, she/ her pronouns for Pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 03:26:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14440434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinabutterandjam/pseuds/pinabutterandjam
Summary: Lance performs a dramatic retelling of something that happened between him and his roommate to the local flower shop owner (Keith).





	Flowers Fix Everything (At Least I Hope)

It started off a normal day. Keith started the morning chugging down hot coffee and sliding into his shoes, folding the backing underneath his heels. He wasn’t late, but his part-time employee was still there, sitting out front on the tiny ledge against the big window of the shop.

“Were you waiting long?” Keith asked, fumbling with his keys before shoving them into the lock.

The employee shook her head, and with it, her shaggy peanut-butter coloured hair. “Not really. Wasn’t enough time to install a touch-pad lock myself at least.”

Keith let out a long sigh as the door swung open, and the aroma of roses smacked him in the face. February 15. Too many leftover roses that he would have to heavily discount or throw out. Or maybe use them in a recipe, like rose petal jelly. He had seen that online once.

Nevertheless, there was a ridiculous clutter of them at the front of the shop, and he had to squeeze his way past the displays and potted plants to get to the counter.

It was barely ten minutes past opening when a lanky boy came barreling in through the door. He nearly knocked down five different potted flowers before he rammed into the counter, his upper body leaning in from the impact.

“I really fucked up, can you help me out?”

 

Lance was up no later than ass-crack o’clock. For laundry, no less. 6am was the perfect time to beat the bodies and get a machine before anyone else in the building. The hours of availability were from 6am-5pm, and no one was willing to push off sleep for laundry on a weekday. No one but Lance, and his roommate rolling in from a night shift.

His load of colours was filled to the brim, since he’d neglected this responsibility for too long, so he didn’t have enough space for the beautiful light grey jacket he wore yesterday on his blind date. The date didn’t go so well, but he pampered himself by splurging on new skincare products and overly pigmented valentine candy.

But the other spinning load of laundry in the room had space. His roommate wouldn’t mind, right?

Wrong.

 

Keith blinked at this overly energetic stranger, thinking about how it was physically possible to run on energy like that at all, let alone in the morning.

Keith opened his mouth to speak, but the stranger beat him to it. “I accidentally dyed an entire load of white clothes. My roommate’s clothes, specifically. Are there flowers for that? Flowers that say ‘Hey I’m so sorry I did that, please don’t kill me while I sleep’?”

“Um, yeah, I guess?” He was already planning a red and yellow rose bouquet in his head. “I’m sorry, how did you manage to dye a load of your roommate’s clothing?”

The stranger pushed his palms into the counter and leaned back with a sharp inhale. “Well, it was Valentine’s day yesterday,” he said, as if the flower shop wasn’t fully stocked with Valentine’s day decorations. “And I bought like, a lot of candy. A lot.” He took a pause, and then began speaking quickly, with equally as quickly hand gestures, leaning his entire body into the movements. “So like, I didn’t realize that I had left some candy in my pockets. An entire bag of those cinnamon heart candies, you now the really hot, really _bright_ ones?” Keith nodded. “Because I’m cursed or whatever, that bag wasn’t tied tightly enough, so there was no saving myself. No chance of just plastic melting into my pocket. But I didn’t know! I didn’t know, and I put my jacket into a load of my roommate’s whites.”

“No…”

“Yeah! God, so she opened the load, and everything was pink! And not like, uniformly pink, adding a new pop of colour to her wardrobe. No, it was like a cheap tie-dye of a red sticky mass imbedded into the clothing.

“It took her a few seconds, searching for what the fuck did this and she sees my jacket, with a melted compressed ball of plastic in a mountain of what looks to be Satan’s red turd. I could see the fire in her eyes, and she lunged at me like a panther! I ended up running all the way here to avoid slaughter, and will need to seek refuge until I can return with my weight in flowers and chocolate, and lift the curse on my body so this will never happen again.”

There were a few moments of complete silence, the stranger- Mr. Mint, as Keith dubbed in his head due to the friendly demeanor and long legs- patiently anticipated some kind of response while Pidge and Keith processed his story.

It was Pidge who first reacted. She let out a muffled laugh from behind her hands and squatted on the floor when standing threatened to throw her off balance.

Keith on the other hand laughed without restraint. The laugh rolled out of him unwillingly and bounced off the walls. He held onto the counter as he hunched over with tears springing in his eyes.

Mr. Mint was red in the face, and his fists balled up at his sides. “Hey!” he squeaked. It was anything but intimidating.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Keith said, finally coming down from the laughter. A giggle slipped out of him as he straightened up and wiped under his eyes. “That’s just the funniest thing I’ve heard in weeks.”

Mr. Mint’s posture relaxed slightly, but he averted his gaze from Keith. “So, can you help? With the flowers?”

“Yeah, I’ll just,” he paused momentarily to think. “Pidge,” he called out, not bothering to finish his previous sentence. “Can you bring over 15 red, and 15 deep red roses from the front?”

“You think he’ll be redeemed with 30 roses?” Pidge ask teasingly, looking up at Mr. Mint who ran his fingers through his hair. Still, she started sorting through the vases of roses, examining each of them for imperfections.

“40 roses, I’m adding in yellow ones,’ Keith paused in front of the back room behind the counter. “Yellow roses are for friendship,” he clarified to the still-stressed stranger, who had begun pacing the length of the counter.

He stopped in place, looking up at Keith. “And the red ones?”

“Deep red means sorrow, and regular red can mean respect.” Mr. Mint nodded slowly, seeming to reflect on the words. “Does your roommate know flower language?” Keith asked, moving into the back to grab the sparse amount of yellow roses.

“Maybe? I know her girlfriend does.” His voice got lower, as if he was speaking to himself, “I could invite her over, lighten the tension.”

“She could be a witness to your murder,” Pidge said from behind him, startling Mr. Mint into throwing himself away and into the daisies. Luckily, he scrambled and caught the pot before it tipped over.

“I’m sorry!” He shouted, the red covering his remarkably smooth face before he threw his hands over it. “Ugh, I’m just going to stand here and not move before I break anything.”

Pidge delicately placed the bundle of roses on the counter. “Sounds good. We’ll be done in a few minutes, then you can go beg for your life.”

It really only took five minutes to assemble. Mr. Mint stood in place, unmoving but fidgeting with his slim fingers, and grasping at the loose curls in his hair every once and awhile. The bouquet was huge, wrapped up in a sheer material, and tied off with a satin bow, far too pretty to be turned down during an attempted apology. 

After the payment, Pidge and Keith sent the stranger on his way, guiding him through the store carefully after he tripped and nearly squashed the prepared flowers with his body.

“Do you think he’ll survive his roommate’s fury?” Pidge whispered, even though they were all alone.

“I don’t even think he’ll make it home in one piece.”

 

The next morning, too early in the morning, the door swung open, and pulled Mr. Mint with it into the wall. He recovered quickly, then proceeded to weave through the store a lot more cautiously than the day prior, yet still managing to nearly knock down five potted plants. The lack of urgency relieved Keith. “You’re alive,” Keith said, smirking at him while wiping down the counter.

Mr. Mint let out a sigh that caused his chest to collapse forward. “Just barely. My roommate threw her wet clothes at me for a solid 5 minutes before I could apologize.”

“Did she like the flowers?”

“She did! But her girlfriend liked them more, and stole the bouquet from her.” Mr. Mint looked at him in the eyes, seemingly determined yet… bashful? “You only asked for $10, but she said the bouquet looked like it costed $50.”

“Oh.” Suddenly, he was the one who felt off balance. “Yeah, well-”

Mr. Mint placed two 20 dollar bills on the counter before he could finish the sentence. He smiled sincerely to match his next words, “Thank you for the flowers, you saved my butt.”

“Oh no it’s- you don’t need to pay me more! Really, $10 was enough! The flowers needed to go anyways, and your story was funny. Unfortunate! But it’s the highlight of my month, so it makes up the difference.” Keith picked up the bills from the counter, and held it out to the stranger. “Save your money for next time.”

As he took the money in his hands, the beautiful man with blue eyes asked, “How about I use the money to buy us some coffee sometime?”

“Smooth,” Pidge said walking by.

Mr. Mint's cheeks turned pink, and Keith giggled. “I’d love to. My name’s Keith, by the way.”

His eyes brightened with his smile. “I’m Lance.”

**Author's Note:**

> (Mr.Mint is from the board game Candy Land)
> 
> I sure do love self projecting onto Lance :) I mean, I’ve never dyed a load of whites with candy before (actually… I probably have, but whatever), but I’ve had to buy ppl flowers to apologize for my disastrous clumsy life mishaps.  
> I occasionally post about my clumsy life stuff on my tumblr if you ever wanna know how I’ve fucked up previously. @ pinabutterjam.tumblr.com/tagged/clumsy-life
> 
> Anyways, let me know what you think of this!


End file.
